Impassioned by Passion: Knowledge and Love in Plato and Spinoza

Marie-lise Zovko, Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb

Education is never a purely intellectual affair: the education of desire is central to a
theory of virtue in Plato and Spinoza. In the Symposium, eros is the name for the impulse
of desire in all its forms.1 In Spinoza's Ethics, the multiple manifestations of desire are
collectively signified by the term conatus. Both works present by the interweaving of
knowledge and eros, naturalism and intellectualism as paradigmatic for the education and
perfection of human desire.2 Spinoza was familiar with works of important Renaissance
Platonists like Abraham Cohen Herrera (Puerta del Cielo, Casa del Divinidad, and Epitome y
Compendio de la Logica o Dialectica) or Judah Abravanel (alias Leone Ebreo, Dialoghi
d'amore), and also with direct and indirect sources of Platonist thought like Proclus,
Augustinus, Aquinas and the Scholastics, as well as with the Stoics and Neo-Stoics.3 Spinoza
interpreters like Gebhardt, Dunin-Borkowski, and Wolfson noted Spinoza's reception of
Platonic ideas and concepts as transmitted through Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic sources.4
Recent interpretation has tended to ignore Platonic influences, presumably as irrelevant for a
proper understanding of Spinoza's naturalism. Yet comparison of Plato and Spinoza in
respect to the relationship of desire and virtue, knowledge and love throws light not only on
Spinoza's doctrine of the affects and bondage to the affects, and the path to freedom and
blessedness, but also, in retrospect, on Plato's understanding of the parts of the soul, the stages
of knowledge, the ascent of love to the vision of beauty, and the relationship of knowledge
and love in our education to virtue. In fact, Spinoza's description of the stages of knowledge
and love in the Short Treatise and the Ethics,5 culminating in the unity of scientia intuitiva
and Amor Dei intellectualis, provides a near perfect imaging of the ascent of knowledge and
eros as described in the Republic and the Symposium. The ascent of knowledge in the

1

F.M. Cornford, The Doctrine of Eros in Plato's Symposium, in G. Vlastos, ed., Plato II. A Collection of
Critical Essays. Ethics, Politics and Philosophy of Art and Religion (Univ. of Notre Dame, 1978), 119-131; 121.
2
Cf. M.E. Zovko, Naturalism and Intellectualism in Plato and Spinoza, in A. Arndt, J. Zovko, eds., Freiheit
und Determinismus. Studia philosophica Iaderensia (Erlangen: Wehrhahn 2012), 11-62.
3
The works of many of these authors, including a Spanish version of Abravanels work, Dialogos dAmor,
counted among the holdings of Spinoza's personal library. Cf. Adri K. Offenberg, Spinoza's library. The story
of a reconstruction, Quaerendo, Volume 3, Number 4 (1973): 309-321.
4
S. Dunin-Borkowski, Der junge De Spinozad (Mnster: Aschendorffschen Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1933), (in
Allison's view The classic study of the influences on Spinoza. Cf. H.E. Allison, Benedict de Spinoza. An
Introduction [rev. ed. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987], 228 n. 1); C. Gebhardt, Spinoza
und der Platonismus, in Chronicon Spinozanum, I (1921): 178234; H.A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza.
Tracing the Latent Processes of His Reasoning, Vols. I, II, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1962).
5
The thorny issue of the relationship between the Ethics and the Short Treatise cannot be dealt with here. It is
assumed that the two are fundamentally in agreement as regards the main points of comparison presented here,
despite differences of method and terminology.

Analogy of the Line in the Republic, seen from the perspective of the Symposium, turns out to
be a journey motivated by desire and by transformation of the natural desire for the good by
means of the passion of the intellect for knowledge and truth, and, ultimately, for the
contemplation of beauty and the good which awaits the philosopher as reward of the ascent.
The ascent describes the progress of the soul through ever clearer knowledge to an ever
greater Love, for, as Spinoza explains in the Short Treatise: Lovearises from the
perception and knowledge which we have of a thing, and as the thing shows itself to be
greater and more magnificent, so also is our Love greater and greater. (ST II, 5; cf. II, 3f.) It
is this idea of a greater love which resolves the question of similarity and difference of
Plato and Spinoza with regard to the doctrine of knowledge and eros. The path to a greater
love is not thereby one of ever greater abstraction from the singular beings of our experience
by means of the art of reasoning and a resulting accruement of categorical knowledge for
we cannot love an abstraction; and love we must for this is an absolute and irrevocable
condition of our continued existence and realisation of the excellence proper to our being as
just these human individuals.
The vision of beauty and the good which is the aim of the philosopher in Plato is
rooted in the striving for perfection of desire and harmonisation of the three impulses which
shape life (Cornford), the reflective, passionate and concupiscent. In Spinoza, the conatus or
striving (to persevere in being) which comprises the characteristic life force of all things and
of nature as a whole achieves perfection in the understanding of the true causes of things, in
particular of the causes of the affects, which comprises the virtue of the intellect: the scientia
intuitiva by whose realisation is attained the blessedness of Amor Dei intellectualis. In this
paper, I consider the striking similarities and some important differences revealed by a
comparison of the ascent of knowledge and love as portrayed in the speech of Diotima in
Plato's Symposium and as portrayed in Spinoza's Short Treatise and the Ethics.
I. Nature and virtue in Spinoza and Plato
Spinoza and Plato both distinguish a conative and a cognitive element in the path to
human excellence. True knowledge and true love are the condition of the philosopher's task.
This duality is at the root of the paradoxical unity in difference of beauty and goodness,
naturalism and intellectualism in Plato and Spinoza. It is in the relationship of knowledge and
eros, moreover, that the close affinity of Spinoza and Plato becomes clearest and most
luminous.

In the exchange between Socrates and Agathon which precedes Socrates account of
the conversation with Diotima, it is agreed that love is of good and beautiful things (201 a-b,
c-d). Diotima and Socrates agree that love desires what it lacks, and is therefore itself neither
beautiful nor good (201e), nor a god (202d), but rather a great daimon (202e), halfway
between gods and men, the mortal and immortal ( 202e).
Lacking good and beautiful things, this daimon is desirous of those things which it lacks
( , 202d). Socrates advances the proposition that
good things are beautiful ( ; 201c). This is not to say that
the good and the beautiful are the same, nor that all beautiful things are also good, but only
that whatever is (truly) good is also beautiful. Eros is also said to be desirous and competent
of wisdom throughout life ( 203d-e), for wisdom has to do
with the fairest things ( ) Love, then, since it is a love of
what is fair, must be a philosopher or lover of wisdom ( ,
203b; cf. 204 d).
What love is in itself, like the question what the good is in itself, and what the
beautiful in itself, remains undetermined. Diotima takes up the statement of Agathon and
turns it into a question: What is the love of the lover of beautiful things?, and what will he
have who gets beautiful things? As so often in the dialogues, when the inquiry touches on the
highest things, a direct response eludes them, and a more circuitous route is taken. Leaving
the central question unanswered, Diotima tells Socrates to imagine that, instead of the
beautiful, the inquiry is to be made about the good (
: 204c). The question then becomes: what is the love
of the lover of good things? Without attempting to resolve what love itself, and the good
which is the object of love are, the response focuses instead on love's intention: the lover
loves what he loves, scil. good things, to be his (204e). The reason for his desiring good
things is obvious to both Diotima and Socrates: the lover desires good things in order to attain
happiness (205a). Therewith, a third term is introduced, and, in passing, love is equated with
desire. Happiness, in the meantime, is equated with possession of good things
This love is common to all, for everyone always wishes to have good things
(205a) . Nevertheless, as Diotima and Socrates agree, the statement that all men love the
same things always does not imply that all men love, but rather, that some people love
and others do not. (205a) Love which is common to all, it is implied, is distinct from love in
the proper sense. The first type of love, which ordinarily bears the name of the whole (
), the desire of good things and of being happy, Diotima designates as the

generic category of love (205c:

). Love, however, is not only desire for the good, but desire to possess it always,
( 206a), and thereby to ensure our own lasting
satisfaction or happiness. How lasting possession of the good may be attained, and what
distinguishes love in the general sense of a natural striving for the good from the love by
which human beings may be said to love in a proper sense, appears to depend on the nature of
the object, whether it is more or less worthy of pursuit. Returning to a variation of his original
question: what is the method of those who pursue [the good] and in what the effort of
love is comprised, Socrates introduces an important new distinction: love is not love of the
beautiful, but of the begetting on a beautiful thing by means of both the body and the soul
( 206b). This engendering and begetting Diotima
describes as a divine affairan immortal element in the creature that is mortal which may
only occur upon or in the presence of the beautiful (206c). Conjoining striving to engender
upon the beautiful with the affirmation that love loves good to be ones own for ever
Diotima concludes that love is of immortality (207a). In loving, mortal nature ever seeks,
as best it can to be immortal (207cd). It seeks to leave behind it a new creature in place of
the old, to immortalize itself by leaving behind some new image of itself in place of the
old. This striving is a universal characteristic which emerges at a certain stage in any
creatures natural development, manifesting itself in a specific way in our own process of
physical and intellectual maturation. Thus, even though they cannot literally preserve their
own existence living beings strive to persevere by procreation of something like themselves:
Every mortal thing is preserved in this way; not by keeping it exactly the same for ever, like
the divine, but by replacing what goes off or is antiquated with something fresh, in the
semblance of the original. (208 a-b) It does this, according Diotima, in one of three ways: by
begetting children, by gaining honour and reputation through ones actions or by creation of
works of art, good laws and institutions, and through cultivation of virtue.
As expression of love of what is immortal, the desire to engender and beget is
praiseworthy in itself, but even more so in proportion to the excellence of the thing striven for
(208e). Herein lies the basis for the distinction between love which is common to all and
love in a proper sense, specifically, in the interest of the latter for the most beautiful things.
This happens to be the particular concern of the philosopher, the lover of wisdom, which has
to do with the fairest things. The philosopher is one of those persons who go about pregnant
in their souls, and in their soul still more than in their bodies conceive those things which are
proper for soul to conceive and bring forth..Prudence, and virtue in general and by far the

highest and fairest part of prudencethat which concerns the regulation of citiessobriety
and justice. (208e-209a) Moreover, one whose soul is so far divine that it is made pregnant
with these from his youth, desiring when he has reached maturity to bring forth and beget
virtue, goes about seeking the beautiful object whereon he may do his begetting. The
beautiful object upon which the philosopher may conceive bring forth virtue is one who like
himself is desirous and capable of philosophy. If he chances upon "a soul that is fair and noble
and well-endowed", "he takes in hand the other's education", then he applies all his resources,
discoursing with him "of virtue and what should be the good man's character and what his
pursuits" (209b-c)
The curious bond of beauty and goodness (kalokagathia) which constitutes the ideal of
being human and characteristic expression of virtue in classical Greece6 is thus transformed in
Diotima's speech from the eudaimonia of one who possesses or can obtain the transitory
goods afforded by material possessions, position, honours, long life, into the eudaimonia
afforded by the society of those whose common concern is for virtue and the cultivation of
virtue, whose union brings forth children far "fairer and more deathless" than physical
children (209d). Love in the Symposium appears, on this account, to be inextricably tied to the
desire to preserve one's being, both physical and intellectual, and to the immortality attained
by the procreation of virtue in oneself and a kindred soul. The association of virtue and justice
with beauty, and of striving for virtue (the fairest thing) with desire for immortality is of key
importance to the comparison of Plato with Spinoza. In the identification of love of the good
with desire to preserve one's own being, Plato and Spinoza are in complete agreement.
In Spinoza, the essence of all things is conatus,7 more precisely conatus sese
conservare or conatus in suo esse perseverare. 8 Striving to persevere in one's being is

6

W. Jaeger, Paideia, The Ideals of Greek Culture, trans. by G. Highet, Vols. I-III, repr. of 2nd ed. (New York:
Blackwell, 1954-1965), I, 13.
7
Spinoza's Ethics synthesizes a naturalist theory of motivation with an intellectualist theory of virtue. The
relationship of naturalism and intellectualism in Spinoza's Ethics is characteristic of a type of virtue ethics and
moral perfectionism whose roots can be traced to the Socratic paradoxes. Cf. Naturalism and Intellectualism,
3, 4.
8
Ethics 3P6: Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being [in suo esse
perseverare conatur]. Cf. ibid. P7: The striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing
but the actual essence of the thing. It is important to note the universality of this striving, which is best
understood as a physical force, analogous to Newton's law of inertia. Even the affections of the body strive to
persevere in being, each affection receiving from its cause the force to persevere in its being, whichcan
neither be restrained nor removed, except by a corporal causewhich affects the Body with an affection
opposite to it and stronger than it. (4P7) For this reason, it is incorrect to identify conatus with psychological
egoism. Cf. Naturalism & Intellectualism, 6. In the following, Spinoza's Ethics and the Short Treatise are
quoted according to the translation of E. Curley, The Collected Works of Spinoza (hereafter CW) Vol. I
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). The Ethics is cited by an Arabic number referring to the part, a
letter standing for an abbreviation as follows: D=definition, A=axiom, P=proposition, S=scholium, C=corollary,
App.=appendix, Pref.=preface.

conceived of as a universal law of nature, governing all things and their behaviour, from the
purely physical to the characteristic unity of mental and physical processes that comprises
human individuals. In humans, conatus is accompanied by consciousness of ones striving to
persevere in one's being, and is called appetite (cf. Ethics 1App.). Because of their
consciousness of their own striving to persevere, conatus manifests itself in human beings
as opposed to animals, plants, or inanimate things, where this striving is unconscious or
instinctive as a specific, characteristic relationship of body and mind, necessity and
freedom, nature and virtue.
Spinoza's thoroughgoing naturalism forms the primary focus of discussions of
Spinoza's philosophy today.9 This naturalism, however, is of a peculiar kind, well-known in
the history of Platonism, closely related, for example, to Plotinus idea of the One as source
and principle of all things and the manner in which the levels of reality proceed from the One
(cf. eg. Ennead VI, 8 On Free Will and the Will of the One) . The absolute necessity with
which all things proceed from the One is, paradoxically, one with its absolute freedom, its
limitation by and dependence on no thing. In the same way, the cause of causes, origin and
ground of all reality, the substantia infinita, causa sui, natura naturans, exists and acts from
the necessity of its nature alone (ex sola suae naturae necessitate) and compelled by no other
thing. There is exactly one such self-caused substance, which is in itself and is conceived
through itself (1D1, D3), whereas everything else that is, is in substance, is caused by
substance and conceived through substance (1A1, A2, D2, D5). The substantia infinita is
therefore the only thing that can properly be called free (1D7, 1P17 and C2) whereas
everything else is determined or compelled by another to exist and act.10
Human beings, like other finite modes, are part of nature and follow the order of
nature according to which all things ensue, proceeding from the one infinite substance with
the same necessity with which from the nature of the triangle2 follows that its three angles
are equal two right angles (cf. Ethics 1D1,2,6; 1P17S). According to Spinoza, we perceive
and deem to be good that which arouses our appetite and which we are stimulated to pursue as
necessary or beneficial to our perseverence in being. Striving for what is good in this sense,
and the associated ability to persist in one's being, is in itself of no moral consequence,
although it forms the necessary condition of our existence and of our moral behaviour. For
No one can desire to be blessed, to act well and to live well, unless at the same time he

9

Cf. Naturalism & Intellectualism, 1ff.

Ibid. 3-4.

10

desires to be, to act, and to live, i.e. to actually exist. (4P21)11 Conatus alone, then, cannot
explain what it is to be human; for human beings' nature includes intellect, and our striving to
persevere is a striving to benefit ourselves not only as physical, but also as intellectual beings.
Spinoza's naturalist theory of the affects or emotions is, accordingly, tied to an
intellectualist theory of human virtue.12 This is the basis for the similarity between Spinozas
ethical theory and the famed paradoxes of Socrates: no one does evil willingly or knowingly,
i.e. everyone desires what appears to him to be good, and its corrollary: knowledge is
virtue: in other words, to know what is good is to want and to do what is good. For
knowledge (as opposed to instinct, or any other physical force alone) ensures that human
beings pursue what is truly beneficial to them.13 The first statement describes the natural
striving for whatever appears to ensure our continued existence (a fundamental physical drive
humans share with other living beings), whereby we may or may not identify our true end
what it means to preserve our existence and the means to attain it correctly. The second
statement affirms the specifically human means of striving for what will ensure our genuine
fulfillment as just this sort of being.
Like the Socratic paradoxes, the Ethics can be seen as operating on two plains,
exploring, on the one hand, the natural motivation of emotion and action, elaborating, on the
other, the life of virtue and freedom constituted by adequate knowledge of the true causes of
things.14 To merely follow our affects results in bondage to the pleasures of the moment
(App XXX) and the power of external causes. If, however, we follow the better part of
us, that part of us which is defined by understanding , we shall while remaining part of
the whole of nature, whose order we follow, and wanting nothing except what is necessary
ultimately find satisfaction in what is true, that is, in adequate knowledge of the true
causes of things as they follow from the substantia infinita. By this means, the striving of the
better part of us is brought into agreement with the whole order of nature (4App.XXXII).
Above and beyond the harmonisation of our being as part of nature with understanding
under the guidance of the reason, the conscious aim of human striving requires the perfection
of intellect itself. The ultimate end of the man who is led by reason, his highest Desire, by
which he strives to moderate all the others is to conceive adequately both himself and all

11

Cf. ibid. 10, 6.

Cf. M. LeBuffe, From Bondage to Freedom. Spinoza on Human Excellence (New York: Oxford Univ. Press
2010), 19f.
13
Cf. G. Santas, The Socratic Paradoxes, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 73, No. 2 (Apr. 1964): 147164; 147
and n., cf. 157. Meno 77b78b, Prot. 345e; 358c, 360d3, Gorg. 468c57; 460bd, 509ge57; indirect
statements of the doctrine occur in Meno 87, 89; Laches i98; Charm. 173.
14
This is why Spinoza can say, on the one hand, that the first and only foundation of virtue is striving to
persevere and, at the same time, that it is striving for understanding (4P26, P22).
12

things that can fall under his understanding, above all to understand God, his attributes, and
his actions which follow from the necessity of his nature. By this knowledge and
understanding, the intellect is perfected, and our freedom and blessedness, which consist in
that satisfaction of mind that stems from the intuitive knowledge of God, achieved.
(4AppIV)
The virtue or power of the intellect lies then in adequate knowledge of things,
especially of the true causes of the affects, to which without such knowledge we otherwise
live in bondage.15 Spinoza differentiates in this connection emotions which are actions from
emotions which are passions.16 A person is said to act only insofar as he understands, where
acting is doing something which is perceived through his essence alone (4P23), and
[A]cting from the laws of one's own nature or doing something which is perceived through
one's essence alone is the definition of freedom (1Def6). To attain freedomrequires
knowledge17: self-knowledge, knowledge of things, knowledge of God (cf. 4App.IV).
Striving to preserve oneself is the first and only foundation of virtue (4P22 & C), but to
act from virtue means acting, living, and preserving our being [...] by the guidance of
reason, from the foundation of seeking one's own advantage. (4P24)18

15

After laying the ontological foundation for the treatment of his topic in Part I, De Deo, with his explanation of
God's nature and properties and the dependence of all things on him, Spinoza proceeds in Part II to the
explanation of those things which must necessarily follow from the essence of God (the substantia infinita),
not, however, all things, since from the substantia infinita infinitely many things must follow in infinitely
many ways, but rather only those that can lead us to the knowledge of the human Mind and its highest
blessedness. (2Pref.) Cf. Naturalism and Intellectualism, 6.
16
Spinoza differentiates affects or emotions which are actions, i.e. which follow from us as their adequate cause
by reason of our forming adequate ideas of their true causes, from emotions which are passions, i.e. to which we
are in bondage on account of our being ignorant of their true causes. He distinguishes, accordingly, between
strivings or desires (i.e. striving together with consciousness of striving or appetite) which follow from the
necessity of our nature in such a way that they can be understood through our nature alone as through their
proximate cause, and strivings which follow from the necessity of our nature insofar as we are a part of nature,
which cannot be conceived adequately through itself without other individuals. (4App.I) The former are
related to the Mind insofar as it is conceived to consist of adequate ideas. The latter are not related to the
Mind except insofar as it conceives things inadequately and are defined not by human power, but by the power
of things that are outside us. The former are therefore rightly called actions, the latter passions, the former
indicate our power, the latter our lack of power and mutilated knowledge. (4AppII) Good and evil relate to
each of these levels in a specific way. Good is, on the one hand whatever there is in nature that we judge to
be useful for preserving our being and enjoying a rational life, on the other, in reference to our specific nature,
that which aids us to enjoy the life of the Mind as defined by understanding. Evil is equated, on the one hand,
with whatever there is in nature that we judge to beable to prevent us from being able to exist, on the other,
with whatever may prevent a human being from being able to perfect his reason and enjoy the rational life.
(4App.V, VIII) Of these two: the power to persevere in one's being and the power to perfect our intellect or
reason and to achieve understanding, understanding ultimately takes priority, leading to true fulfillment, the
enjoyment of the life of the Mind. Cf. Naturalism & Intellectualism, 17.
17
From Bondage to Freedom, 20.
18
Cf. Naturalism & Intellectualism, 12.

In Plato, realization of the virtue proper to human beings requires appropriate nurture
and education of the emotive, volitional and intellectual parts of the soul.19 In the opening
lines of the Meno, three possible routes by which virtue may be attained are distinguished: 1)
instruction 2) practice and 3) nature (70 a). The path of the philosopher constitutes an ascent
through these three stages, beginning with the natural inclination for the good, advancing by
means of good practice instilled in youth, and perfected by proper instruction. In the Republic,
justice, the pinnacle of virtue in which all virtues are united, is achieved by education of each
part of the soul to the fulfillment of its proper function, and cooperation of all with one
another.20 The highest object of instruction (megisthon mathema), by which the ruler acquires
the virtue of the philosopher-king and the ability to realize justice in his own soul and in the
state, is knowledge of the good, culminating in the vision of the Idea of the Good. This is
illustrated in the three central Analogies of the Republic, dedicated respectively to the Idea of
the Good (Analogy of the Sun), the stages of knowledge and ascent to the vision of the Good
(Analogy of the Line), and, in the Analogy of the Cave, paideia or education, featuring the
philosopher who ascends from the darkness of the cave to the light of the sun, from blindness
to vision, from ignorance and self-deception to knowledge, and who descends again in order
to free those imprisoned by their fascination with the illusion of sense phenomena, which
exist only as a weak and distant shadow of what really is, and lead them upwards on the path
to knowledge of reality and truth.21
Transforming passion into action, inadequate into adequate knowledge, accidental
associations among images and memories of bodily affections into adequate ideas of their true
causation is the basis for attainment of virtue, freedom and happiness in Spinoza.22 An affect

19

The epithumetikon, thumoeides and the logistikon, cultivated respectively by the appropriate form of mousike,
gumnastike and the various arts and sciences tehnai and epistemai, along with proficiency in abstract reasoning
cf. Rep. 521e ff., cf. 525b ff.
20
Cf. Rep. 554 e.
21
Rep. 504a ff.
22
Adequacy is in the Ethics the primary criterium of truth, and refers to the instrinsic validity or selfconsistency of ideas. An idea is adequate which considered in itself without relation to an object, has all
the properties or intrinsic denominations of a true idea. The term instrinsic is used to exclude what is
extrinsic, i.e. correspondence or agreement of the idea with its object, which for Spinoza is only a secondary
criterium of truth (Ethics 2Def4). In a letter to Tschirnhaus, Spinoza differentiates true from adequate as
follows: the word true refers only to the agreement of the idea with that of which it is the idea, while the word
adequate refers to the nature of the idea itself; so that there is really no difference between a true and an
adequate idea except this extrinsic relation. Cf. Epistola 60, cited by Wolfson II, 101. As Wolfson explains,
internal criteria of truth, including the Cartesian criteria of clearness and distinctness, are used by Spinoza as
something independent of correspondence, to avoid the impression that a true idea must be a copy of
something which actually happens to exist outside the mind. On the contrary, the idea must agree with the
reality of its ideate, but the reality with which a true idea must agree is not necessarily an external object; it
may be its ideal nature conceived by the mind as something necessary in itself, or as something which follows by
necessity from that which is conceived as necessary by itself, or as something which follows necessarily from its
own nature and definition. (ibid. 104)

is an idea of an affection of the body, and as such already involves some clear and distinct
concept (5P4C). This natural predisposition to ideation lies at the base of our ability to form
an idea of the causes of things, including our ability to form an idea of an affect. By utilizing
and developing this natural disposition we can come to understand ourselves and our affects,
and so bring it about that we are less acted on by them. (5P4C)23
The same affect can be a passion or an action, depending on whether or not we form
an adequate idea of it (an idea of the idea of a bodily affection); for it is the same affect by
which a man is said to act, and [...] to be acted on. Mastering the affects should, therefore,
be a very straightforward matter. Because we are not purely intellectual beings, however, but
part of the common order of nature, affects cannot be mastered by reason alone.
Affects in Spinoza are an expression of both a physical and a mental state. As an idea
of an affection of the Body, an affect affirms of its body a greater or lesser force of existing
than before. Because of its dependence on a bodily state, an affect can be neither restrained
nor taken away except by the idea of an opposite affection of the body stronger than the
affection through which it is acted upon.24 (4P7C) For example, Joy and Sadness are ideas of
affections of the Body which increase or diminish, aid or restrain our power of acting.25 We
experience joy when something happens to our body which increases our power of acting, and
sadness when something happens to our body which decreases our power of acting.26 What
we call good or evil is only an affect of Joy or Sadness, insofar as we are conscious of it.
Good and evil, in the words of the Short Treatise, are not real beings; they are neither things
nor actions, and nothing in nature, but only beings of reason, corresponding to a universal
idea.27 As relations, which have reference to different things, they nevertheless help us to
understand things more distinctly. (ST I, 10; CW I, 92)
In the language of the Ethics, our knowledge of good or evil is an idea of an idea of an
affection of the Body, an idea which follows necessarily from the affect of Joy or Sadness

23

Cf. Naturalism & Intellectualism, 21-22.

Cf. ibid. 27. My italics.
25
Joy, Sadness and Desire (appetite together with consciousness of the appetite) are the three fundamental
affects from which all others arise. Apart from these Spinoza acknowledges no others (Ethics 3P11S, cf. 3P9).
26
The natural mechanism which drives us to pursue what is beneficial and avoid what is harmful is in Aristotle
the experience of pleasure and pain (EN 1172a 2026). In Spinoza, the opposition of pleasure and pain is
reflected in the emotions of Joy and Sadness, which are an expression of success or inhibition of the fundamental
striving to persevere, and by the associated appetite for things which increase our ability to act, and repulsion
from things which diminish the same ability (cf. 3P9S, 3P11S; cf. 4P19).
27
Spinoza differentiates universal from particular ideas, eg. the idea of Peter and Judas. Only particular
ideas, whether of things or of actions, exist in nature. Things must agree with their particular Ideas, whose being
must be a perfect essence and not with universal ones, because only particular ideas exist. Cf. ST I, 10. The idea
of an individual being extends to and includes the idea of his or her particular body, for To produce in
substantial thought an Idea, knowledge or mode of thinking, such as [this soul of] ours now is, not just any body
whatever is requiredbut one which has this proportion of motion and rest and no other. (ST II, 1)
24

10

itself (4P7; cf. Part 2, Gen. Def. of the Affects). The idea of an affect (as idea of an idea of
an affection) is united to the affect in the same way as the Mind is united to the Body.28
Nonetheless, it is not the idea as knowledge which is capable of restraining an affect, but only
such knowledge considered as an affect. (4P14, 15) In other words, only by a stronger
affect what Spinoza calls a greater love can an affect be overcome. This greater love,
however, is not attained by abstraction from the individual, nor is it aroused by or directed
toward a universal idea or category. To be sure, it is only once an affect has been transformed
from a passion to an action by our having formed a clear idea of its true causes that we are set
free from our bondage to it. For only when we live according to the guidance of reason may
we properly be said to act. This is because, for human beings to act freely, they must
themselves be the cause of their actions through which those actions are understood, in the
sense in which whatever follows from human nature, insofar as it is defined by reason [...]
must be understood through human nature alone. (5P35, cf. 3P3, 3D2) When human beings
act according to reason, they act, moreover, in accordance with the laws of their nature in the
proper sense, desiring what they judge correctly to be good, and striving to avoid what they
judge correctly to be evil, since what we judge to be good or evil, when we follow the dictate
of reason, must be good or evil, and not merely appear to us to be so.29
Affects which arise from the affections which singular things produce in our bodies, if
they are not understood with respect to their true causes, exclude and replace each other in
succession over time, remaining present only through associations with other affections,
images and ideas in our memory (cf. 5P7). Affects which arise from reason, on the other
hand, are necessarily related to the common properties of things30; and so always regarded
by us as present. Since there can be nothing which excludes their present existence [...] we
always imagine them in the same way. (5P7) As related to a number of causes concurring
together, such an affect is more powerful than those related to fewer causes (5P8).31
II. Stages of knowledge in Spinoza and Plato
Corresponding to the transformation of the striving to persevere we share with all
things according to the common order of nature into striving according to the order of

28

The idea of an affect is only conceptually distinguished from the affect itself, i.e. the idea of a Body's
affection. Spinoza eliminates herewith the logical consequence of an infinite regress which the relationship of
idea to ideatum would otherwise entail (4P8). 28
29
Ibid. (my emphasis). Cf. 2P41.
30
Nevertheless, common properties of things are nothing in themselves, but only in relation to real beings, i.e.
really existing particular beings or actions in nature (cf. n. 29, ST I, 10)
31
Cf. Naturalism & Intellectualism, 32.

11

intellect, Spinoza differentiates levels of awareness. These correspond to the types of

knowledge outlined in Part 2 of the Ethics and in chs. 1-4 and 21-22 of the Short Treatise.
The hierarchy of the stages of knowledge described by Spinoza belongs to a long tradition
descended from Plato's Analogy of the Line. In his description, Spinoza distinguishes three or
four or stages of knowledge, depending on whether the first two types are counted as one or
as two individual stages.32 In Part II of the Ethics, the following types or stages of knowledge
are differentiated:
1.

imaginatio

2.

opinio

3.

ratio

4.

scientia intuitiva

In the Short Treatise, Spinoza describes human beings as consisting of modes of thinking
substance, divided into opinion (arising either from experience or hearsay33), true
belief, and science or clear and distinct knowledge. This division and the corresponding
one in the Ethics reproduce the main division of Plato's Line into the realm of appearances
and opinion (), and the realm of reality and ideas or true knowledge (), along
with their subdivision, with imagination and opinion corresponding to the individual cuts of
the lower segment into the lower intellectual capacities of and , and ratio and
scientia intuitiva corresponding to the higher segment and the higher functions of intellect,
and . The manner in which our notions or concepts are formed with respect to
this hierarchy determines whether our notions of things will be adequate and our knowledge
clear, distinct, and true.34
In order to illustrate by a single example the specific relationships of the three (four)
stages of knowledge, Spinoza employs, in both the Short Treatise and the Ethics, an analogy
one that, in its key characteristics, corresponds precisely to the analogy of Plato's Line. For
not only does Spinoza deem analogy the appropriate method for elaborating the ascending

32

Wolfson relates Spinoza's division to the division of Plato's Line (II,133 and n. 1, with text references: Rep VI
511 D, VII, 533 E: (, ), , , ; and the various classifications in Aristotle
(ibid. and n. 2: Analytica Posteriora, II, 19, 100b, 7-8: , , , ; De Anima III, 3, 428, 4-5
, , , ; Metaphys. XII, 9, 1074b, 35-36 , , , ;
Nichomachean Ethics , VI, 3, 1139b, 16-17: , , , , , , . Wolfson
notes the apparent inconsistency of Spinoza's numbering of the stages of knowledge in the Tractatus de
Intellectus Emendatione, the Ethics, and the Short Treatise (II, 131f.) In fact, the division into three or four is a
result of Spinoza's close association of the first two stages, because of their dependency on the senses and their
relative unreliability and subordinate position with respect to the attainment of true knowledge.
33
For clarification of terminological inconsistencies with regard to Spinoza's use of the words belief (geloof) and
opinion (waan) in this passage cf. Curley, CW I, 97 n. b.
34
Naturalism & Intellectualism, 33.

12

scale of the stages of knowledge; as his primary analogue and point of departure for his
comparison he explicitly chooses the rule of three, i.e. the law of proportion,35 the same rule
which forms the basis for Plato's Analogy of the Line.36, Spinoza compares the different
approaches of applying the rule of three to solving a proportion to the individual levels of
knowledge: one who has merely heard someone else say that ifyou multiply the second
and third numbers, and divide the product by the first, you then find the fourth number, which
has the same proportion to the third as the second has to the first, will perform this action
without having any more knowledge of the rule of three than a blind man has of color,
and whatever he may have been able to say about it he repeats, as a parrot repeats what it
has been taught. (ST II, 1) Another, acting on the basis of opinio, an acquired but unproven
habit of mind, tests it with some particular calculations, and finding that these agree with
itgives his belief to the rule. He thus confirms it by the experience of some particular
[cases], but cannot be sure that this is a rule for all. A third person, consults true reason
which tells him that because of the property of proportionality in these numbers the rule
necessarily applies. A fourth, however, has the clearest knowledge of all, for having no
need either of report, or of experience, or of the art of reasoning, through his penetration he
immediately sees the proportionality [and] all the calculations.37

35

The rule according to which, given three numbers, of which the first two form a specific ratio, one may obtain
the value of a fourth, unknown term, by multiplication of the means and extremes. For an interpretation of the
division of Plato's Line according to the image of a geometrical proportion, which provides the original basis for
the use of the word analogy, cf. the excursus by M.E. Zovko in J. Zovko, M.E. Zovko, The Metaphysical
Character of Philosophy, in: M. Pestana (ed.) Metaphysics, (Rijeka: InTech 2012) 9-44; 16-19.
36
On the central role of the law of proportion to interpretation of Plato's Line cf. M.E. Zovko, The Way Up and
the Way Back is the Same. The Ascent of Cognition in Plato's Analogies of the Sun, the Line and the Cave and
the Path Intelligence Takes, in: Platonism and Forms of Intelligence (Berlin: Akademie Verlag), 2008: 313341. 326-336, and The Metaphysical Character, 16-19.
37
My emphasis. Cf. the corresponding passage from the Ethics:
Suppose there are three numbers, and the problem is to find a fourth which is to the third as the second is
to the first. Merchants do not hesitate to multiply the second by the third, and divide the product by the
first; because they have not yet forgotten what they heard from their teacher without any demonstration,
or because they have often found this in the simplest numbers, or from the force of the Demonstration of
P[7] in book VII of Euclid, viz. from the common property of proportionals.
But in the simplest numbers none of this is necessary. Given the numbers 1, 2, and 3, noone fails to see
that the fourth proportional number is 6 and we see this much more clearly because we infer the fourth
number from the ratio which, in one glance, we see the first number to have to the second. (2P40S2, my
italics)
In this version, the merchant who relies on knowledge of the first type uses a kind of trial and error with simple
numbers representable by things of sense (as per imaginatio, eikasia), while in the merchant in the second
example applies rote learning without genuine understanding of the rule received from a master (opinio,
pistis). If the merchant arrives at the solution on the basis of Euclid's demonstration of the general property of
proportionals, then his knowledge is obtained by the second (third) type of knowledge (ratio, dianoia) ex eo,
quod notiones communes rerumque proprietatum ideas adequatas habemus. The highest form of knowledge,
however, is something like the higher form of perception or intuition designated by the term noesis in Plato's
Line. Given a ratio of simple numbers, one to two, and a third number: three, everyone can see that the fourth
proportional is six. This intuitive grasp of the proportion provides us with a much clearer grasp of the solution
than the other three approaches, because we infer the fourth number from the ratio which we see the first

13

By this use of analogy, as from the motif of the analogy itself, the close relationship of
knowledge and affect is brought to the fore. Whereas, on the one hand, the affects are
constituted as ideas of affections of the body, from the stages of knowledge arise, on the other
hand, as from their proximate cause all the passions of the soul, from each according to its
type: from the first, imaginatio and opinio, those which are contrary to good reason; from
the second, ratio, the good Desires; and from the third, scientia intuitiva, true and genuine
Love. The highest form of knowledge, namely, is clear knowledge which goes far beyond
the others, for it comes not from being convinced by reasons, but from being aware of and
enjoying the thing itself. It is a knowledge which is itself enjoyment. (ST II, 2)38
Affects which are no longer passions, but which are not yet actions, Spinoza connects
with the activity of imagination, defined as an idea by which the Mind considers a thing as
present (4P9; Cf. 2P17S). Imaginations indicate the constitution of the human Body more
than the nature of the external thing (4P9; cf. 2P16C2), and do not represent true knowledge
of the causes of things which affect the body (4P9).39 The human mind, however, conceives
things as actual in one of two ways: either in relation to a certain time and place, or as
contained in God and as they follow from the necessity of the divine nature. Things known in
the first manner are known only confusedly and fragmentarily. Only things conceived of
under a species of eternity (sub specie aeternitatis), that is: through God's essence, as real
beings [...] insofar as through God's essence they involve existence, are known adequately,

number to have to the second. This type of thought forms the necessary complement and presupposition of
discursive thought, enabling us to see the whole and to formulate hypotheses and explanatory models capable of
describing complex phenomena, providing the basis for their understanding and appreciation and also for an
effective approach to the mastering of complex tasks and problem-solving.
38
Herein, as Sigwart notes, Spinoza differs from Descartes Passions de l'ame I, 27 who sees motions of the
animal spirits as causes of the passions (cf. Curley CW I, 99 n. 2). This corresponds in Spinoza to affects which
are passions, but not to the same affects insofar as they are capable of being actions. This dual view of the
relation between knowledge and the affects is also apparent in Spinoza's discussion of the imagination: despite
its apparent devaluation in connection with the hierarchy of affects, Spinoza sees imagination in itself as a virtue
or strength of our nature. He notes nonetheless how much more of a virtue imagination would be, if the Mind's
faculty of imagining were free, that is, if its functioning depended only on its own nature, instead of on the
changing affections which the unending succession of the singular things of our experience produces in our
Body, a hypothetical state surpassing even that of adequate knowledge of our affects. Although we can imagine
what it would be like to enjoy and in certain types of creative activity might even be said to participate in an
equivalent power of imagination, in fact, freedom of imagination in this sense is attribuable only to the
substantia infinita (cf . Ethics ID7). Kant's idea of an intellectual intuition, impossible to humans but
hypothetically attribuable to God, and of an analogous type of productive or spontaneous imagination in
humans, shows important similarities to Spinoza in this point. Cf. Critique of Pure Reason, Unified Edition,
transl. W.S. Pluhar, intro. P. Kitcher (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1996) B 68, 72; Cf. B 103, 151; Critique
of Judgment, Including the First Introduction, transl. w. intro. by W.S. Pluhar, w. foreward by M. J. Gregor
(Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1987), 240244. Cf. Naturalism & Intellectualism, n. 72.
39
When we imagine something future or past, we are affected by the same affect as if we were imagining
something present (3P18), but the intensitiy of the imagination depends on whether or not other things are
imagined at the same time which exclude the present existence of the external thing which we perceive as
cause of the bodily affection whose idea the affect is (cf. P9S & C). Neither the image nor the affect, however,
conveys the nature of the external thing which we perceive as the cause of the affection.

14

or as they truly are.40 The essence of the human mind consists, namely, in knowledge
which involves knowledge of God (4P37), so that, ultimately, the human mind is defined and
perfected by its capacity to have an adequate knowledge of God's eternal and infinite
essence (5P36, cf. 22P47). Therefore, the greatest good of those who seek virtue is to know
God. (5P36)41
III. Knowledge and Eros in Plato and Spinoza
Both Plato and Spinoza distinguish a proportionality in the division of the stages of
knowledge which is tied to a proportionality in the objects of knowledge and desire in the
same way as the ascent of knowledge is tied to the perfection of human nature. The question
remains: what is the final aim of the ascent, what is the love of the lover and how is its
fulfillment attained? We have seen that in Spinoza the striving which defines our essence as
humans is ultimately a striving for understanding whose goal is virtue, and hence freedom,
and happiness. In Plato, too, love is fundamentally love of virtue. But is virtue, as the adage
goes, and as Spinoza seems to confirm, its own reward?
A striking difference between the speech of Diotima and Spinozas account of love in
Part V of the Ethics is the seeming absence in Spinoza of any reference to love of beauty and
the associated desire for procreation, or their related manifestations in nature, art, or human
forms of life.42 Whereas the concept of Beauty is absolutely central to the treatment of love in
the Symposium and Abravanels Dialoghi, it is not explicitly present in the Ethics. In

40

Ethics V, 29, Schol.

Cf. Naturalism and Intellectualism, 32f.
42
A prominent feature of the treatment of love in works of the Italian Renaissance, including Marsilio Ficinos
commentary on Platos Symposium (1474-75), and Judah Abravanels (Leone Ebreos) Dialoghi damore, for
whom Platos and Plotinus theory of beauty provided the historical and substantial presupposition. Cf. W.
Beierwaltes, Marsilio Ficinos Theorie des Schnen im Kontext des Platonismus, in Sitzungsberichte der
Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Jahrgang 1980, Abh. 11: 1-56; 9. The Dialoghi damore (1501-02,
published 1535) were present in Spinozas library in Spanish translation, the Dialogos damor, at the time of his
death. Though Wolfson plays down the importance of Abravanel for Spinozas philosophical development, the
obvious parallels make it plausible that Spinoza derived from it his doctrine of the Intellectual Love of God (C.
Roth, Introduction to L. Ebreo, The Philosophy of Love [Dialoghi dAmore], [London: Soncino Press 1937],
xv). The pairing, in the first dialogue, of Love of God and knowledge of God, in which true happiness consists,
parallels Spinoza's conjoinment of scientia intuitiva and Amor Dei intellectualis in Ethics V. Abravanel, like
Plato, distinguishes as objects of love and desire the useful, the pleasant and the good. With regard to humans
true ends: love and desire of the good, whence spring virtue and wisdom, no limit is enjoined on us, as is the
case with respect to objects of pleasure and usefulness. The universality of love, i.e. the fact that it is common to
all things animate and inanimate, as well as its differentiation, in the second dialogue, into three kinds: natural
(in inanimate things), sensitive (in animals) and voluntary and rational (in human beings) is perfectly in accord
with Spinozas concept of conatus and its articulation according to the orders of nature and the intellect. Spinoza
departs from Ebreo in his rejection of anthropomorphizing references to Gods will or intellect, or to his love
toward the modi.
41

15

Abravanels 3rd dialogue, beauty is distinguished from goodness, and made a condition of
human love, as a grace which brings pleasure to the mind which perceives it and so moves
it to love (195) [207a]. The absence of this central concept appears to undermine the
hypothesis of any affinity between Spinozas theory of love and that of Plato and the
Platonists. If we turn to the definition of Love in the Short Treatise, however, and compare it
to the exposition of the stages of love in the speech of Diotima, genuine parallels to the
concept of beauty in Spinoza are brought to light.
Love, according to the Short Treatise, is nothing but enjoying a thing and being
united to a thing. (II, 5; Curley CW I 105) Enjoyment and being united with the object of
love is the fulfillment of conatus or the universal striving to persevere which in humans is
ultimately love of immortality. The stages of love are divided according to the qualities of
the object man seeks to enjoy and unite with. Thus, love arises from the perception and
knowledge which we have of a thing, and as the thing shows itself to be greater and more
magnificent, so also is our Love greater and greater. (II, 5; CW I 104, my italics) The quality
of the love we have toward a thing depends on the type of knowledge from which it arises
and on the manner in which it the object manifests itself to us. The objects of love are divided
thereby into three categories: those which are corruptible in themselves, those, which
through their cause, are not corruptible, and a third kind which, solely through its own
power and capacity, is eternal and incorruptible. By corruptible objects, Spinoza means
singular things, which have not existed from all time, or have had a beginning. By objects
which are incorruptible by virtue of their cause, he means all those modes which are the
causes of the singular modes; and by the third kind he means God, or what we take to be
one and the same thing, the Truth (CW I, 105). The first type of love-objects are those
perceived by the the first kind of knowledge or opinion. From this type of knowledge and its
objects (undifferentiated experience of particular things) arise emotions which are passions,
which displace each other in succession, since whenever someone sees something good, or
thinks he does, he is always inclined to unite himself with it. This continuous displacement
of competing objects of desire is subject to the perception of whatever one perceives to be
better at any given moment, for whenever one comes to know something better than this
good he now knows, then his love turns immediately from the first to the second. (CW I,100)
The same type of displacement may occur under the influence of the opinions or prejudices of
others or from mere report, as Spinoza calls it.
The second type of knowledge, true belief, refers to the causes of the singular modes,
but teaches us only what it belongs to the thing to be, not what it is, i.e. its general

16

characteristics. This type of knowledge can never unite us with the thing we believe,
because it sees its object as a thing external to itself. It is nevertheless good insofar as it leads
to true knowledge and makes us perceive intellectually those things which are not in us, but
outside us, awakening us to things that are truly worthy of love, and propelling us toward
a clear understanding, through which we love God (ST II 3, CW I 102f.; 4, 104). True
belief (in the Ethics, ratio) thus provides us with the knowledge of good and evil, and shows
us all the passions that are to be destroyed. In other words, the passions which come from
opinion are sifted by this second kind of knowledge, to see what is good and what is evil in
them, i.e. what is beneficial and what detrimental to our perseverence in our being.43
Love cannot be aroused by this type of discursive rationality, because of the abstract
and general nature of its objects. [O]ur nature, however, requires us to love something and
to unite ourselves with it, in order to exist. On the basis of true belief and clear understanding
we strive to free ourselves of the passions which come from opinion. Nonetheless, we never
strive to free ourselves from love itself as we do from the passions. Spinoza gives two
reasons for this: 1) because it is impossible; 2) because it is necessary that we not be free of
it. (ST I, 5; 104f.) The reason it is impossible is because we do not decide whether or not to
love a thing; rather, the object of our love or desire arouses in us the love we feel toward it,
because of the good or advantage we find in the object. Our response to the object is in this
respect automatic. In knowing an object which appears to hold some good or advantage for
us, we must also love it, and we cannot not know the objects of our desire, at some level or
another, as long as we are. It is necessary, furthermore, that we love some object of our
desire, because we could not exist if we did not enjoy something to which we were united,
and by which we were strengthened. (ibid. 105) Our striving to persevere and our love for
the objects which enable us to do so is the necessary condition of our very existence.
Nonetheless, loving particular things at random and uniting ourselves with them does not
strengthen our nature at all, and is even harmful to us. True love, on the other hand, comes
always from knowledge that the thing [scil. the object of our love] is splendid and good:

43

According to Spinoza, [I]n Nature there is no good and no evil. Rather, whatever we require of man, the
standard by which we measure human actions, relates only to his genus, to an Idea we have conceived of a
perfect man in our intellect. Standards of good and evil are thus only beings of reason or modes of thinking.
Whatever helps us to attain that perfection we call good, and whatever hinders our attaining it, or does not
assist it, we call evil. General questions regarding mans good and evil must be carefully distinguished from
the good and evil of, say, Adam. In forming such judgments, a true philosopher must scrupulously avoid
confusing a real being with a being of reason. (II, 4, CW 103f.)

17

Love is a union with an object that our intellect judges to be good and magnificenta
union such that the lover and the loved come to be one and the same thing, or to form
a whole together. (ST I, 5; Curley CW I 105f.)
Of the three types of love-objects, the third is the only one which provides true and lasting
satisfaction. He who unites with corruptible things is always miserable, since the things he
unites himself with are outside his power and subject to many accidents. Particular things,
nonetheless, at least have some essence; far more miserable are they who love honour,
wealth and sensual pleasure, which have no essence. The second kind of objects, though
eternal and incorruptible, are not such through their own power; they are nothing but
modes which depend immediately on God. Thus, we cannot conceive them unless we have
at the same time a concept of God. In God, however, [b]ecause he is perfect, our love
must necessarily rest. Indeed, it will be impossible for us, if we use our intellect well, not to
love God. This is because when we who love something come to know something better
than what we love, we always fall on it at once, and leave the first thing. God, however, has
all perfection in himself alone. Therefore, we must love him. Furthermore, if we use our
intellect well in the knowledge of things, we will come to know them in their causes.
Nevertheless, since God is a first cause of all other things, the knowledge of God is prior,
according to the nature of things, to the knowledge of all other things, while the knowledge
of all other things must follow from the knowledge of the first cause. What else can follow
from this, but that love will be able to pour forth more powerfully on the lord our God than
on anyone else? For he alone is magnificent, and a perfect Good. (ST I , CW I, 106-107)
In comparison, discursive reasoning, though it enables us to recognize standards of
moral behaviour, does not have the power to bring us to our well-being (ST II, 22; CW I,
138). The reason we can see the good and fail to find in ourselves the power to do the good,
or omit the bad, is that ratio or discursive reasoning does not provide us with direct
experience of the thing, but only with conclusions arrived as a result of logical derivation
from general concepts. Spinoza explains this by reference to the rule of three, for we have
more power if we understand the proportion itself than if we understand the rule of of
proportion. (ST II, 21; CW I, 138). The kind of knowledge that produces love, as opposed to
the desire which proceeds from reasoning, is not a consequence of anything else, but an
immediate manifestation of the object itself to the intellect. (my italics) It is clear
understanding, not arrived at as a result of a second thing, and not coming from outside.
Discursive reasoning has only the power of controverting the opinion of others or a report,
and can in this capacity be a cause of the destruction of those opinions which we have only

18

from reportbut not of those which we have through experience. The love which arises from
the experience of particular things, on the other hand, can only be destroyed by another love
that is greater, and this is possible only through direct experience or clear understanding of
the proportion itself: For the power the thing itself gives us is always greater than that we get
as a result of a second thing. (ST II, 21; Curley CW I, 138)44
The image of the proportion provides in its illustration of the type of higher-level
perception by which the solution of the proportion equation is recognized an analogy for the
direct experience which the intellect has of the immediate manifestation of the sole object
which is in itself magnificent and good, i.e. God. At the same time, it constitutes itself an
example of the type of higher-level perception and reasoning, i.e. the recognition of and
reasoning from analogy, which it is intended to illustrate. Through this clear understanding
the soul necessarily becomes united with its true object, just as the body necessarily unites
itself with particular objects according to the manifestation and experience of their goodness,
and this despite the fact that we may not know him [God] as he is, just as we do not know
particular things as they are, but only according to the affections they produce in our bodies.45
This, then, is Spinoza's equivalent of the vision of beauty in the Symposium, the union
of the lover with the object of his love, which corresponds to the culmination of the ascent of
love in Diotima's speech: the clear understanding of the proportion, the direct experience of
the object which is most magnificent and best of all (heerlijkst, gloriosissimus/optimus).

44

Spinozas position in the Ethics appears to contradict this view of reason, when he says that an affect that
arises from reason and which is necessarily related to the common properties of things, since we always
regard [such properties] as present is more powerful than those related to singular things which we regard as
absent (5P7), whereby Things we understand clearly and distinctly are either common properties of things or
deduced from them. (5p12D, cf. 2P40 S2) Nevertheless a man does not know himself except through
affections of his Body and their ideas, (3P53; cf. 2P19 and P23) and since No affect can be restrained by the
true knowledge of good and evil insofar as it is true, but only insofar as it is considered as an affect (5P14), it is
through the knowledge of God considered as an affect that we are liberated from bondage to affects or emotions
which are passions, i.e. by which we are made to suffer instead of to act. Desires which arise from affects by
which we are torn, whose force and growth are defined by the power of external causes, can be more
violent than desire which arises from the second kind of knowledge (4P16). Love toward God alone is able to
engage the mind in a manner that liberates it completely from bondage to affects which arise from external
causes. This is possible precisely because this Love is joined to all the affections of the Body (5P16) through a
knowledge by which the Mind knows itself and the Body under a species of eternity, by which knowledge it
necessarily has knowledge of God and knows that it is in God and is conceived through God. (5P30) From this
kind of knowledge arises the greatest satisfaction of Mind there can beJoy accompanied by the idea of
oneself, and also accompanied by the idea of God as a cause (5P32), in other words Love of God, not insofar
as we imagine him as present, but insofar as we understand him to be eternal. This is what Spinoza calls
intellectual Love of God, a love by which we partake of the same infinite intellectual love with which God
loves himself (5P35, cf. 5P36).
45
That this greater love is not a negation of, or mere abstraction from, the love we have for particular things,
but its consummation, is made clear by Spinoza's comparison of direct experience of the most magnificent object
with our experience of individual things, concerning which Spinoza exclaims: For even in the knowledge we
have of the body we do not know it as it is, or perfectly. And yet, what a union! what a love! (ST II, 22; CW I,
139)

19

This type of knowledge, which is the knowledge of God, is not the consequence of anything
else, but immediate and furthermore, is the cause of all knowledge which is known
through itself alone, and not through any other thing. Knowledge of God, moreover, is
knowledge from within, as is evident from the fact that by Nature we are so united with him
that without him we can neither be nor be understood; and it is because there is so close a
union between God and us that we can only understand him immediately and not as a
result of a second thing, i.e. as a consequence of reasoning (ST II, 22; CW I, 138f.).
IV The Ascent of Love in Plato and in Spinoza
According to Diotima, human nature can find no better helper than love. (212b)
Diotima portrays what appears to be a hierarchical ordering of love, based on its objects and
leading to an ultimate object, beauty itself, which is the principle of all other objects and
determines their place on the ladder.46 The vision of beauty which is the consummation of
striving for beauty present at all levels of human striving is equated furthermore with love and
desire for immortality. To attain the ultimate goal of love as desire of beauty and immortality
the lover progresses from love of physical beauty in a particular love-object to love of
physical beauty in all its instances, thence to love of beautiful laws, institutions, sciences, and
finally to the science whose object is beauty itself .
Vlastos disparages Platos account of love in the Symposium as egocentric.47 As the
desire to possess what is beautiful, it is, in Vlastos view, centered on satisfaction of ones
own desires. Any love of persons as individuals is in his estimate made subordinate to love of
beauty in itself; we love only the image of the Idea when we love an individual. Vlastos
considers Platos theory, inosfar as it sees this lesser love as a mere stepping stone (211c) to
the attainment of the vision of beauty itself, and does not provide for love of whole persons,
but only for love of that abstract version of persons which consists of the complex of their
best qualities, as lacking in comparison with Aristotles definition: Love is wishing good
things for someone for that persons sake.48
Spinozas understanding of love and its grounding in the conatus suo esse conservare
provides the basis for a proper understanding of what to Vlastos appears to be the egocentrism
of Plato's account by illuminating conatus as the necessary condition of any kind of love,
and virtue as conatus ultimate aim. What comes across as egocentrism in Plato's and

46

D. Levy, The Definition of Love in Plato's Symposium, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Apr.Jun. 1979): 285-291; 285.
47
The Individual as Object of Love in Plato, Platonic Studies (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1973), 30.
48
Ibid. 30, 31, 32.

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Spinozas theory of love is, in fact, nothing but the natural desire for and striving to obtain
what appears to be beneficial for our existence, and constitutes the necessary condition and
factual basis of our perseverence in being. The final aim of that striving: true knowledge,
virtue and happiness, cannot help but include love for particular individuals and objects of our
desire. These are not negated by a categorical abstraction, but consummated in the singular
vision and direct experience of their source and cause. 49 The ultimate object of love in the
Symposium, beauty itself, is intimately tied to the good, as in the Greek concept of
kalokagathia, and to the attainment of ones own virtue. As Levy argues, if the good one
desires for oneself is to possess virtue, then At least some of the time, desiring to possess
virtue for oneself consists in wishing good things for someone for that person's sake. In fact,
union with the true love-object entails without exception desiring the same good for others we
desire for ourselves.50 According to Spinoza, the object of Love toward God, the equivalent
of Love toward Beauty and the Good in Plato, and in Spinoza the highest good which we can
want from the dictate of reason, is common to all men. Therefore, we desire that all
should enjoy it. In other words, it cannot be tainted by an affect of Envy or Jealousy.
Rather, the more men we imagine to enjoy itthe more it is encouraged. (5P18)
The union we have with God by Nature and by love is grounded in the union which
the whole of nature has with God, for there can be nothing in Nature of which there is not an
idea in the soul of the same thing, and since the whole of Nature is one unique substance,
whose essence is infinite, all things are united through Nature, and united into one viz.
God. According to Spinoza, there can be nothing in Nature whose Idea does not exist in the
thinking thing. Thus, there is an idea of the body, the very first thing our soul becomes
aware of. But the idea cannot find any rest in the knowledge of the body, without passing
over into knowledge of that without which neither the body nor the Idea itself can either exist
or be understood, and as soon as it knows that being, it will be united with it by love. (ST
II, 22; CW I, 140) By the union with the body, and knowledge of and passions toward
corporal things, "all those effects which we are constantly aware of in our body arise. When,
however, our knowledge and love come to fall on that without which we can neither exist
nor be understood, and which is not at all corporal, we are necessarily united with that
object, and effects arise from that union which are incomparably greater and more
magnificent. When this occurs, we can truly say that we have been born again, and have

49

Cf. ibid. 286.

Cf. M.E. Zovko, Involved in humankind: Nature, virtue and the good we desire for ourselves and for others,
in: Knowledge Cultures 1(2), 2013: 264-300.
50

21

achieved immortality, for the Soul can be united either with the body of which it is the idea, or
with God, without whom it can neither exist nor be understood. The state of being united
with God which is achieved through scientia intuitiva as adequate knowledge of particular
things and their true causes51, is that of a second birth:
For our first birth was when we were united with the body. From this union have
arisen the effects and motions of the [animal] spirits. But our other, or second, birth
will occur when we become aware in ourselves of the completely different effects of
love produced by knowledge of this incorporeal.
Insofar as the soul is united with the idea or with God it remains immutable or immortal. The
third kind of knowledge (2P47S), whose foundation is the knowledge of God itself,
begets, moreover, a Love toward a thing immutable and eternal which we really fully
possess (5P20S) Imagination and memory cease, according to Spinoza, when the duration
of the body comes to an end (5P21); but in God there is neessarily an idea that expresses the
essence of each individual body and each individual mind, under a species of eternity, and
which is necessarily eternal (5P22, 23). And although it is impossible that we should
recollect that we existed before the body since there cannot be any traces of this in the body
still we feel and know by experience that we are eternal. (5P23, my italics) Here again, the
close connection and ultimate union of knowledge and love are brought to the fore. By the
third (fourth) kind of knowledge we proceed from an adequate idea of certain attributes of
God to an adequate knowledge of the essence of things, and vice versa, from ever greater
understanding of things to an ever greater understanding of God. It is from this type of
knowledge that the greatest satisfaction of Mind and the greatest pleasure, accompanied by
the idea of God as a cause, that is the greatest love arises.
An analogous relationship between the hierarchy of knowledge and that of love as
well as their respective objects can be observed in the Symposium. The three aims of eros
according the the speech of Diotima: knowledge of beauty, beauty itself, and immortality,
are related to the three forms in which human beings strive to achieve immortality: physical
procreation (207a6-208b6), lasting fame (208c1-209e4), and true virtue based on the
knowledge of beauty and the good (210a1- 212 a7). Only the last of the love-objects ensures
true immortality, qualifying eros which aims for that goal as love in the proper sense, but this
aim is not totally disconnected from the other two, just as knowledge is connected with eros

51

Because of the presence in God of an idea of every particular thing, Spinoza can assert that The more we
understand singular things, the more we understand God. (5P24)

22

or desire at every stage of the ascent. Chen sees in the progress from one stage of striving to
the next the aims of eros mingled with the steps of cognitive striving until the last step.52
The lover of beauty perceives beauty first in individual instances of beautiful bodies. He
recognizes thereby the kinship of beauty in these individual instances. By a gradual process of
de-individualisation, he is led to love the beauty of beautiful bodies indifferently with
regard to, though not separately from, these particular bodies, whose beauty he perceives as
kindred to every other instance. In Chen's view, this kinship is not to be confused with a
general category, i.e. beauty-in-all-bodies as such, just as in Spinoza's analysis it is not a
category we love, but a particular thing. A similar situation can be observed with regard to
love for beautiful (virtuous) souls. This love, too, is directed toward individual instances, for
whom the lover creates discourses, in order to improve their virtue, and not toward beautyin-all-souls as such. In the same way
when the lover advances to love beautiful institutions and laws he still grasps only
their (210c3-5) and not the ; being is not the same as being
one and the same genus.53
Thus, with regard to beautiful institutions and laws, the lover sees that the beauty of them
is of one family (syggenes), but he does not grasp the genus itself.54 The progress of love
Chen sees as one of a horizontal expansion, which advances from recognition of the kinship
of beautiful bodies, to recognition of the kinship of beautiful souls, and, finally, to recognition
of the kinship of beautiful sciences and institutions; but he rejects the idea that what is
happening is a process of abstraction and generalization like the one which takes place in
empirical logic. There something common is discovered: Generalization in empirical
logic produces a concept. The progress of love, on the other hand, proceeds by recognition of
the kinship of beautiful individuals: for Plato the apprehending is of an Idea in the
Symposium, the Idea of beauty, a being, an entity, not a concept55 just as for Spinoza it is
not a being of reason or mode of thinking, not an abstraction or generalization, which
arouses love, but a really existing singular thing.56
If Chen is right, the ascent of love in the speech of Diotima is to be seen as a single
upward movement that has only one step and no more, i.e. the step from beautiful instances
to the Idea of beauty. In other words, there is no ascent until the final step in the whole

52

L. C. H. Chen, Knowledge of Beauty in Plato's Symposium, The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 33,
No. 1 (1983): 66-74.
53
Ibid. 67.
54
Ibid. 67f.
55
Ibid. 69.
56
Cf. above 14 f. and n. 29.

23

movement is taken. All the other steps in the process are steps of horizontal expansion
preparing for the ascent.57 Spinozas view of our progress through the stages of knowledge
and love agrees with this interpretation; for it is only in the last step that a transformation of
affect occurs, although advancement from imaginatio and opinio to ratio represents a
horizontal expansion from a confused and fragmentary perception of particular instances of
beauty based on random circumstances of time and place and associated ideas of the bodily
affections to which they give rise to understanding of kindred instances as mediated by their
common properties though not themselves as instances of some generic property beauty. In
Spinozas account, too, there are only two tiers, the level of Ideas and the level of
particulars,58 and no generic hierarchy, no ascent by means of abstraction and
generalisation, from species to genus. There are no unities at the different levels of
beauty, no identity of the beautiful in the many beautiful instances, and no species or kinds.59
Chen considers the possibility, suggested to him by an anonymous scholar of an ascent in
value, and points to evidence in the text which supports this point of view, for example, where
it is explicitly statedthat beautiful souls are timioteron than beautiful bodies, and
beautiful bodies are characterised as as smikron ti in comparison with beautiful souls (and
with beautiful institutions and laws, too. Chen concludes, that the same progress from
beautiful bodies to beautiful souls, or to beautiful insitutions is from the ontic viewpointa
horizontal expansion and from the viewpoint of valuean ascent. Nevertheless, he finds that
the value-relation doesn't apply for the ascent from beautiful souls to beautiful laws and
institutions, nor from these to beautiful sciences, rather The text knows no value-relation
either between the first two groups or between the second two groups. Here, there is no
motivation for the ascent in the sense of abandonment of one group of beautiful instances
for the other.
In the pinnacle of his experience of beauty, the lover cognitively touches the
beautiful itself, gains direct intellectual contact with it or a vision of it. The question is what
is the content of his vision, or what does he apprehend of the beautiful itself [?] Chen
identifies four positive predications which correspond to a preceding series of negations
predicated of beauty: itself by itself, with itself, uniform, and always being. Beauty shares
these predications with the other ideas, and it is not possible to distinguish the nature of
beauty on the basis of them. To define beauty, however, is not the purpose of the

57

Chen 70.
Ibid.
59
Cf. ibid. n. 23.
58

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Symposium, and indeed something like a common nature of beauty eludes us. It is only
the peculiar nature of beauty as a moral and/or aesthetic value as it reveals itself to us only
in individual, kindred instances that are the object of the lovers love.60
Chens characterisation helps to illuminate the relationship of knowledge and love in
Plato and Spinoza. In the relationship of desire for union with and enjoyment of the highest
object of love the deep similarities of Platos and Spinozas positions emerge. The similarities
in the language by which they describe the final stages of the ascent of knowledge provide
hereby the key to a resolution of the difficulty posed by the apparent absence of a term for
beauty in Spinoza. Both Spinoza and Plato are very clear on the priority of "intuitive"
knowledge (scientia intuitiva, noesis) with respect to discursive knowledge (ratio, dianoia).
Spinoza emphasizes how much more powerful the former is than the latter. He even takes
his own exposition in Part I of the Ethics to task in this respect, for although there he showed
generallythat all things (and consequently the human Mind also) depend on God both for
their essence and their existence, nevertheless, that demonstration, though legitimate and put
beyond all chance of doubt, still does not affect our Mind as much as when this is inferred
from the very essence of any singular thing which we say depends on God. (5P37 my italics)
In the Symposium, too, as Chen notes, two distinct cognitions are contrasted: first the
vision of the beautiful itself, and then a sort of dianoia expressed as a general description of
it.61 Although, as in the Line, the two are interdependent, the first, the noetic vision of beauty
takes priority as the final stage by which to reach the goal and pinnacle of the ascent.
At first, beauty appears to be absent from Spinozas treatment of love, and we might
be inclined to view the ascent to the Love of God along the lines of the kind of hierarchical
ascent through a process of abstraction and generalization which Chen rejects with regard to
the ascent of Love in the Symposium. In Spinoza, however, the highest form of knowledge,
the scientia intuitiva, rests in the very Love of God by which God loves himself, not insofar
as he is infinite, but insofar as he can be explained by the human Minds essence, considered
under a species of eternity (5P36) This Love is related to the Minds actions, and is itself
an action by thich the mind contemplates itself, with the accompanying idea of God as its
cause. By this Love, the Mind is part of the infinite love by which God loves himself. This
constant and eternal Love of God, Spinoza identifies with what is called Glory (heerlijkeit,
gloria) in Sacred Scripture. For whether related to God or to the Mind, it can rightly be

60

Ibid. 71.
Ibid. The Phaedo, on the other hand, in describing the pursuit of the knowledge of Ideas, doesn't distinguish
logiszesthai and dianoesthai as forms of discursive thought from theasthai and kathoran, an intuitive grasp.
61

25

called satisfaction of mind, which is really not distinguished from Glory. He compares this
with two definitions from the catalogue of the affects at the end of part III of the Ethics: Def.
XXV: Self-esteem, as a Joy born of the fact that a man considers himself and his own
power of acting, and Def. XXX, Love of esteem, understood as a Joy accompanied by the
idea of some action of ours which we imagine that others praise. These affects in humans
form an analogy to the Love of God, which may be described metaphorically as
Joyaccompanied by the idea of himself And similarly as it is related to the Mind.
In Spinoza, as in Plato, the highest form of knowledge, its greatest striving or love
and its greatest virtue, by which we attain understanding, is not knowledge based on
categorical statements, or the common properties of things and their behavior. This discursive
form of knowledge helps us to distinguish the true from the false and thus to overcome false
associations which occur among our emotions and ideas. The highest form of knowledge,
scientia intuitiva, however, is based on a form of higher-level perception and reasoning by
analogy,62 proceeding from an adequate idea of certain attributes of God to an adequate
knowledge of the essence of things (5P24), enabling us to perceive things under a species of
eternity (5P28), i.e. as they are contained in God...and follow from the necessity of the
divine nature. (5P29, and S; 2P44 and C2) From scientia intuitiva or the knowledge of things
as they are contained in God and follow from him arises the greatest possible Joy and
satisfaction of Mind (5P32). This Joy corresponds to our passage from passion or subjugation
to the affects to action or their clear understanding, in other words, from a lesser to a greater
perfection of the Mind, accompanied by the idea of oneself and by the idea of God, as its
cause. This transformation gives rise to what Spinoza calls the intellectual Love of God
(Amor Dei intellectualis, 5P32), a love which has no beginning and no end. By scientia
intuitiva, the adequate knowledge of things as they proceed from the necessity of Gods
nature, we participate in the infinite intellectual Love with which God loves himself (5P35,
36). This Love is an action by which the Mind contemplates itself accompanied by the idea
of God as its cause, and is therefore an action by which God, insofar as he can be explained
through the human Mind, contemplates himself, accompanied by the idea of himself as
cause. It is thus that Spinoza can affirm that insofar as God loves himself, he loves men, and
...that Gods love of men and the Minds intellectual Love of God are one and the same.
(5P35C) The freedom which this clear understanding brings frees us from fear and sadness,

62

Cf. Zovko, The Way Up and the Way Back, 334f. and n. 49-52.

26

for he who continually contemplates nature, the totality of being and time, does not fear
death.63
Through scientia intuitiva is achieved hope or love of immortality and the perfection
of human nature. For one who understands himself and his affects clearly and distinctly
rejoices...and this Joy is accompanied by the idea of God. (5P15) In God there is, moreover,
an idea not only of the existence of this or that human Body, but also of its essence...which
therefore must be conceived through the very essence of God... by a certain eternal necessity.
(5P22) And just as there is necessarily in God an idea of the essence of this particular human
body, there is also an idea of the essence of the particular human mind whose object is this
body. (5P23) Although we do not attribute to the human Mind any duration that can be
defined by time, except...while the Body endures, yet there is an idea, which expresses the
essence of the body under a species of eternity. The idea which constitutes the essence of this
mind and the singular body to which it pertains must necessarily be eternal, for every single
unique individual exists by the highest right of nature (4P37S2), and both the mind and the
body of every individual are conceived with a certain eternal necessity, through Gods
essence. Although we cannot recollect that we existed before the Body, still, we feel and
know by experience that we are eternal, we feel that our mind, insofar as it involves the
essence of the body under a species of eternity, is eternal, and that this existence it has cannot
be defined by time or explained through duration. (5P23)64
That which affects the mind causing it to love God and its own immortality by uniting
itself with the object of its knowledge is ultimately, then, not the logical consequences of the
common properties of things as based on their derivation from a rule, but the beauty of the
proportion as recognized in direct intuition. It is the beauty of the mathematical proportion
which converts us, not the wearisome proof: For there is more power in us from the
recognition of the proportion itself than from the knowledge of the rule of proportion. (ST II,
9; CW I, 113) Although, then, the term beauty is not used explicitly in this context by
Spinoza, the analogous condition for the object of knowledge and love being able to inspire us
to a greater love is given by the character of the object itself: if the object is glorious and
good, then the soul will necessarily be unified with it, for it is knowledge that causes love.
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63

A free man, Spinoza says, thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not
on death. (Ethics IV, 67)
64
Cf. Involved in Humankind, 294.

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